


beyond your darkness i'm your light

by sullypants



Series: the after-party [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: After Party, Alternate Universe, F/M, Prom, but only some good clean wholesome fun, in which they never dated, some underaged drinking and related shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23639617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sullypants/pseuds/sullypants
Summary: Betty Cooper is tipsy. She’s not drunk; she knows her own tolerance.She’s had a beer and a half, two shots, and she’s on the pleasant edge of buzzed and tipsy, and she knows she otherwise wouldn’t have had the confidence to pull Jughead Jones into the pool, fully clothed, and then proceed to wrap her nearly naked body around him.It’d been a long time coming, from her perspective.
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Series: the after-party [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1701841
Comments: 46
Kudos: 131
Collections: 7th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees





	beyond your darkness i'm your light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [loveleee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveleee/gifts).



> This follows _[there's something that i'm missing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23619937)_.

Betty Cooper is tipsy.

She’s not drunk; she knows her own tolerance. 

She’s had a beer and a half, two shots, and she’s on the pleasant edge of buzzed and tipsy, and she knows she otherwise wouldn’t have had the confidence to pull Jughead Jones into the pool, fully clothed, and then proceed to wrap her nearly naked body around him.

It’d been a long time coming, from her perspective. 

Jughead was usually never around when she had the opportunity to indulge in some liquid courage; she couldn’t remember the last time he’d shown up at a party, let alone something as traditionally high school as a Veronica Lodge Classic, the post-prom after-party. 

But it hadn’t been enough, she thinks. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Her shoulders and hips move in time, as her body cants backwards into Veronica’s, as they chant along, _middle fingers up, put ‘em hands high_ , arms waving high above them like the light refracted off the surface of the pool. 

_I ain’t thinking ‘bout you_ , the song goes, and Betty continues to think about Jughead—his tuxedo soaked thru, meeting her eyes in close proximity, in the warmth of the Lodge Lodge’s swimming pool. 

She thinks about the heat she felt within her body when he put his hands around the small of her waist, about how the shell of his ear felt under her lips. 

She thinks about how she then swam around him, how they talked about the party that pulsed about them; speculated about Reggie and his date, observing from a distance as they swapped saliva in the far corner of the pool. 

(“I think her name is Rebecca?” Betty had told him.)

She thinks about how Jughead hadn’t kissed her. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


She hadn’t realized she _wanted_ to him kiss her until a few months ago, when she learned (via Veronica, who heard from Ginger, who had it from Cheryl, who learned from Toni, who’d seen it firsthand during her evening shift at Pop’s) that Jughead and Ethel had gone on what looked like it could be ( _might_ be) a date. 

But it was at Pop’s. And Jughead doesn’t date, as far as Betty knows. 

Despite this evidence, Betty couldn’t help but confront the warm molten feeling she felt in her stomach when Veronica had shared this gossip. 

Jughead shouldn’t be on a date; with _Ethel_ , of all people. 

Jughead spent his spare evenings helping Betty with the Blue & Gold. If she had a layout to construct, he was by her side, double checking her copy, providing another set of eyes—a sanity check. 

Or he was at Pop’s solo, devouring more burgers than would seem feasible, pounding away on his laptop keys.

He was babysitting Jellybean. He adored Jellybean. 

Maybe he was at Archie’s, focused on whatever video game they were currently in the middle of, or half-heartedly banging a snare drum along to whatever noodly guitar riff Archie was obsessed with that week.

But he wasn’t _dating_. 

Betty found herself struck by this initial reaction. What claim did she have on Jughead’s time? Did she _have_ any sort of claim? Did she _want_ to? What did _that_ mean? 

So followed several months of careful emotional reflection, many hours spent journaling on the topic, and many rehashings of seemingly innocuous interactions with Jughead, all shared with her therapist. 

At some point she accepted that perhaps she felt more strongly about Jughead and their friendship than she initially realized. 

And then suddenly it seemed so obvious.

  
  
  
  
  
  


She’d spent so much of high school in a tête-à-tête with her own best friend over someone she considered her childhood sweetheart, only to suddenly realize she had outgrown whatever feelings she might have had toward Archie. 

She didn’t spend her late nights on the phone with Archie; more often she was in the middle of a fierce debate about New Journalism with Jughead via WhatsApp. 

(Betty had no patience for Gay Talese; while Jughead could see his flaws, he’d argued Talese’s influence had outlasted his relevancy.)

Going to prom with Archie hadn’t even been a thought on her horizon, in the way it had absorbed the second half of junior year.

She hadn’t realized this phase of her life was over; that the endless romantic competition with Veronica had somehow fallen to the wayside, in favor of girls’ nights shared between them, of milkshakes and gossip split with Kevin, of meeting Cheryl for manicures (Cheryl’s treat, as her cousin always insisted). 

As she joins hands with Cheryl, as they raise them in the air and chant _I ain’t sorry_ , she wonders if there was any way she might have made things clearer to Jughead in the pool, or if she was perhaps simply barking up the wrong tree.

  
  
  
  
  
  


She’d realized that swimming literal circles around Jughead wasn’t working. She’d pulled herself out of the water by her arms and laid herself out on one of the lounge chairs that sat poolside, the water dripping off her skin and forming a dark stain on the concrete below her. 

Jughead, pulling off his wet tuxedo jacket and letting it plop with a soggy _sploosh_ onto the cement of the deck, had laid himself out on the adjoining chair, curling his legs up in turn to unlace his Converse and remove his socks, letting each fall to the ground beside his jacket. 

He’d unbuttoned his shirt, too, until he lay out on his chair in merely an undershirt and a pair of soaked tuxedo pants, a shiny stripe of black ribbon up the legs. Horizontal like this, Betty had realized, so much of his height was in those legs. 

She could almost convince herself she felt Jughead’s eyes burning into her, but when she was able to sneak a glance in his direction, his gaze was always skyward, hands cradling his head, his eyes roaming across the stars. 

If laying herself out in her skivvies in front of him didn’t work, what possibly could. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


So she’d changed tack.

Once she’d found herself mostly dry, with the aid of a giant terrycloth towel pulled from the heated linen cabinet she knew lived in the little cabana off the pool deck, she’d taken Jughead’s shirt from where he’d hung it to dry over the back of the lounge chair, and buttoned it around herself. 

She left Jughead dozing on his lounge chair, but not before retrieving the soggy ball of his jacket, and draping it across an adjacent chair.

Her hair had begun to curl dry, so distant from its previous careful blow-out.

She’d pulled herself another beer from the keg in the kitchen, and she’d met Veronica, and Cheryl, and Kevin, and Josie near the stereo, and joined the mass of bodies, where they pulsed as one large organism, rather than thirty-odd individual souls. 

Jughead’s shirt was still damp, but as she moved, she could feel it slowly absorb her body heat. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


(A small voice in the back of her head wonders at the wiseness of walking around essentially _sans_ trousers while surrounded by at least half the varsity football team, but she quickly labels the thought and lets it float past her.

She’s not the same Betty Cooper she was a year ago. 

This Betty is more than a year into therapy, she’s got Columbia in her crosshairs, and she’s surrounded by people like Veronica, and Archie, and Jughead, and Cheryl, and Kevin. 

She can have this. Her dance partners are in a mix of formalwear and sweatpants, pajamas and jeans. She can’t keep herself in a locked box, as she’s sure her mother would love to do so until her fast-approaching eighteenth birthday.

There’s a difference between safety, self-preservation—and the suffocation of insulation. It’s a nuance it’s taken her years to understand even exists. 

Also, she thinks—this shirt is clearly much too large for Jughead, given how she positively swims in it.)

  
  
  
  
  
  


She decides to take a breather, and wanders away from the dance floor. 

Veronica waves her off, moves quickly to fill the gap she’s left, closing in on Cheryl. 

Betty notices how Veronica flattens her palm against Cheryl’s stomach, how Cheryl shifts her neck to accommodate Veronica’s chin over her shoulder. 

(She files all this away for later debrief, certain that tomorrow, if not the next day, Veronica will want to catch up over mimosas and crepes.)

She passes through the kitchen, and manages to circumvent Midge and Moose and Raj, who valiantly attempt to coerce her into another round of shots.

She moves through the hallway that leads to the Lodge’s entryway. Her shoulders still move to the music that bleeds from the living room. She pauses briefly to say hello to Archie and Ginger, but continues on.

  
  
  
  
  
  


She finds Jughead sitting on the stairs that lead to what Betty knows is a maze of guest rooms, more than one of which she herself has slept in. 

He sits, elbows upon his knees, chin in hand. Betty thinks his eyes brighten when he notices her approaching, but she doesn’t let herself dwell on the thought.

“What are you doing?” She speaks at the top of her voice, in an attempt to convey her message over the din of the music. “Don’t be a wallflower, Juggie.” She jiggles her shoulders and moves her hips. She notices that he notices. 

Instead of trying to yell loud enough for her to hear, he simply shrugs. She cocks her head, narrows her eyes at him. She shakes her head, and nods upstairs; she starts up the stairs, and taps his shoulder as she passes him, her nod telling him to follow. He does.

  
  
  
  
  
  


She tries two doors before she finds one unlocked. It’s another guest room, but not one she’s stayed in before. 

She lets herself fall onto the foot of the bed, let’s herself bounce, before she leans back onto her hands and looks at him.

“Are you moping?”

He narrows his eyes at her in response.

“No! No, I’m just...hanging out.”

“It’s okay, Juggie. I know you don’t really like parties.” 

She crosses her legs, and then she realizes she’s still wearing his shirt. It’s long enough to hit her mid-thigh, but—this is perhaps coming on a little stronger than she’d intended.

But it’s Jughead, she thinks. It’s Jughead. She doesn’t trust anyone more. 

He moves to sit next to her on the bed; she bounces when his weight hits the mattress, and she can’t suppress a giggle.

“Sorry,” she says. She stifles her smile. “Sorry.”

He grins at her, looks down at his hands, where his fingers pick at the cuticle around his thumb. 

“It’s fine. I don’t mind it.” He looks up, like he’s trying to figure out a thought. “I’m trying to...well, it’s senior year.”

Betty’s not sure what he means, but she nods in encouragement, in what she hopes is conveyed as an urge for him to continue.

He pins his hands between his knees. 

“I...only have so many chances left to be a typical high schooler. All of us do.” Betty can hear the irony in his inflection.

Betty nods. 

“That’s true,” she concedes. “So what are you trying to do before you run out of time?”

She watches as he mimics her pose, as he leans back onto his hands, his arm brushing her own. He shrugs and frowns, shakes his head. 

She nods. 

“I get that,” she says. She lets her gaze grow hazy, stares off into the distance. 

They’re silent then. She’s not sure how long the moment lasts, but it doesn’t feel uncomfortable. The music bleeds up from below them; _our love was stronger than your pride_.

Jughead falls backward onto the mattress, and she watches him. 

He stares at the ceiling, takes a deep breath.

She takes her own deep breath. Her head clears.

“Juggie.”

His head turns to meet her gaze. 

She lets her body act before her brain, and before her brain has caught up with the rest of her, she’s thrown her leg across him and straddled his waist. 

His eyes are wide, and she pauses, looking down at him. She smiles at him.

“You okay?” she asks.

He returns her smile. He nods. 

“Good,” she says, and leans down to kiss him.

  
  
  
  
  
  


She’s not sure how long they kiss. 

By the time they both surface for air, they’ve moved up the bed and her leg is thrown over his hip. His arm is around her waist, and her own are wrapped around his shoulders.

(His undershirt is also untucked, and she’s discovered the noise he makes when she lightly scratches her nails across his stomach. She makes note of this, files it away for later.

She also realizes she’s never quite been in this situation before. She assumes Jughead hasn’t either, but decides she’ll ask him sometime—not now, but sometime. It doesn’t really matter, she realizes.)

She rubs her nose against his and meets his eyes. 

“Thanks, Juggie.”

His eyes look a little confused. 

“What for?”

She shrugs and pulls him tighter towards her. Instead of answering, she leans back in, feels what she thinks is his smile against her lips.

  
  
  
  
  
  


When Betty awakens, the light that bleeds in through the windows is the soft gray of dawn. There’s a sharp dullness in her side where the boning of her bra digs into her. 

The sheets beneath her are slightly damp, smelling of chlorine. Betty realizes it’s a damp spread by Jughead’s pool-dunked tuxedo pants. 

She turns over gently.

Jughead is snoring softly, and his forehead is unwrinkled in sleep. 

She reaches a finger towards him, softly touches the air over his brow, tries to see how close she can get before alerting him. 

The house below them is quiet, but Betty can hear the soft clink of what sounds like the ice machine in the kitchen. 

She breathes deeply and buries her nose into the collar of her shirt—Jughead’s shirt—and stretches her legs. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


When she opens her eyes again, Jughead meets her gaze. There’s a slight apprehension in his eyes, but it disappears when she feels herself smile. 

She crosses the small distance between them, and tucks her chin over his shoulder.

She feels his arm wrap around her back, feels his nose bury into her hair. She breathes, and closes her eyes again. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Beyoncé's All Night. I exhibited some goddamn strength not titling this _kiss up and rub up and feel up on you_ , please know. 
> 
> I hope it brings you some joy.


End file.
